As a marketer, we come across different technologies on daily basis, we also know that technology is ever evolving field and something new is getting developed as you read this article. There are various tools developed for various activities in different areas, be it social media, content, events, automation or anything you name, there are applications/tools available for it. And, as a marketer, it is expected from us that we, not only, understand the new technology or developed tool, but also know how to use them, how to integrate them with our existing tools, what benefits will this tool provide and how will we be able to engage our audience by using it. This has always been a challenge for us to learn or understand at such a rapid pace, to understand the holistic view of all the different tools in different areas and their usage. And you can understand the level of difficulty when I say that there hundreds of tools available for each activity.

To make it easier for people to understand different tools and their usage and integration with existing tools, I am starting a series of blogs. To start with, I am taking Marketo as Marketing automation tool and will provide the overview of the other tools used in different areas of marketing be it social, analytics, planning or events and their integration with Marketo. The initial focus will be on the following tools:

Activities

Tools

Marketing automation

Marketo – I will start with Marketo because it is one of the best tool and also have strong presence in B2B organizations. Its product strategy, cross-functional vision and robust features makes it leader in automation space and also recent magic quadrant for lead management, from Gartner, included it as the leader in complete vision.

Social

Socedo – To grow and engage audience on social media

Sprinklr – Make you manage each customer’s social experience across every area

Oktopost – Helps B2B marketers to publish content and engage with audiences and also establish ROI for social media

It was the first joint session conducted by Adobe and Marketo post complete acquisition, it was focused on positioning Adobe & Marketo, their joint go-to-market strategy, and how their respective partners can leverage the platforms today.

Session covered the following aspects:

The vision

Though Adobe have the best-in-class solutions for marketing, analytics, advertising and commerce but they still had challenges to cater the requirement for their B2B customers. With 40% of their customers base is B2B, acquisition of Marketo will provide an exponential strength in the range of solution offering.

With Marketo on-board, together they can offer, in addition to the current services:

Lead management solutions

A/B testing and personalization capabilities

Account based marketing

Advance analytics with multi touch attribution

Introduction of Marketo and Adobe platforms

They shared a little introduction of both the tools to make sure that their respective partners and users understand the features and functionalities of tools.Overview of digital experience that adobe offers with its Experience platform and going forward Marketo partners can leverage it to offer better services to clientsFor adobe partners, the introduction of Marketo offering beyond the adobe cloud.

Decision Tree

For the respective partners who offers Marketo and Adobe services to their clients, the session also touched the sales aspect for both the tools. They shared a basic decision tree which will help the partners to understand when to offer Marketo services and when to pitch for Adobe solutions. This can be used till further updates and in case it is difficult to make decision based on tree, they will be ready to help, and partner sales manager can be reached out to discuss it further and prepare the solution.They have also shared a few scenarios, especially for Q4 engagement, to make smooth transition for all the clients and partners. The scenarios include, what to do if:

Adobe account is interested in Marketo and vice versa

If you are in current Marketo or Adobe cycle with your client or they are competing in current cycle

If your customer is due for renewal and need additional offerings from either of the tool

Focus on Q4

The primary target is to finish Q4 strong, to achieve that they have put together the rules of engagements for themselves and partners to follow.

Also, as far as, tools are concerned, both Marketo and Adobe campaign will work as separate entity in Q4, they are still working on how they will be integrating both the tools and how both the technologies will be leveraged.

There will be no organizational or support change in Q4

Next steps for partners

Existing Marketo partners will continue to have sandbox and partner portal access, in addition to it they can sign up to adobe partner program immediately and start leveraging the same.

For existing Adobe partner, they are still working on to provide access of Marketo partner program and more information will be shared as and when it is ready.

Also, they will be conducting more session in future to keep on updating the progress to their partners.

We're hiring a new member in our team, this opportunity will be a Marketo expert supporting our channel campaign efforts, working closely with our channel campaign manager, and our alliance partners: administer and support a wide range of marketing initiatives around lead generation, lead nurture, renewal, and communications to our channel partners and customers. In this role, you’ll help implement and use the latest marketing technologies (very excited!) in marketing automation, CRM and web to support the execution of campaigns. The role requires strategic, technical and analytical skills.

We have a lot of great and leading edge marketing technologies purchased this year, and anyone that's looking for a learning and growing experience, this is for you! Please feel free to drop me a message or apply through the link below, we're looking forward to speaking with you!

We're fun to work with, very open and flexible working environment. Just received an award of Best Place to Work by Boston Business Journal. Unlimited vacation, great location right in downtown Boston, free snacks and drinks right at your finger tip and plenty more great perks for you to find out!

#MKTGNation 2018. Time to overcome a #CaseoftheMondays with FLO RIDA headling the party and Lindsey Vonn as our Keynote. Haven't registered? Save, use my promo code Cutter350 and get seats in the front row. Feel free to post the promo code, share with your colleagues. Questions, just ask me on LinkedIn Dana Cutter. Register by April 1st.

Over the past couple of years I've run into a lot of interesting Marketo situations where Marketo didn't quite do what I needed it to do.

Because I've spent a lot of time digging in the forums here, but haven't really given anything back in the form of answering questions or helping others, I thought I would write up a couple of posts documenting some fun Marketing hacks that have helped me tremendously over the past year or two.